The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Sunday Times says Malta has stopped a Libya-bound fuel tanker.
The Malta Independent on Sunday focuses on the controversy between the GWU, the FORUM group of trade unions and the GWU.
MaltaToday says the sale of property to foreigners is in peril as the government revises the permanent resident scheme
It-Torca says Eddie Fenech Adami’s return to the political arena is embarrassing Lawrence Gonzi. It also reports that according to experts, particles of uranium used in bombs could drift from Libya to Malta
Il-Mument leads with a warning by the bishops that divorce destroys marriage stability. It also quotes Alan Camilleri, chairman of Malta Enterprise, pointing to opportunities for Libya’s reconstruction.
Illum reports that a gang of violent youths attacked six young persons in Sliema.
Kullhadd says the stench near Hexagon House in Marsa was first reported to the government in 2002.
The overseas press
Le Monde quotes a French Defence Ministry spokesman saying French fighter aircraft have destroyed at least five Libyan government warplanes and two helicopters at the airbase at Misrata as they were preparing to carry out operations in the region. Some 20 French aircraft flew sorties on Saturday, carrying out strikes around Zintan and Misrata, two towns in the hands of the pro-democracy forces but under threat from the pro-Gaddafi forces. Libyan state television has also reported that the international coalition has targeted military and civilian areas in the town of Sabha, south of the capital Tripoli, in central Libya. It gave no further details.
Al Jazeera reports the rebels in eastern Libyan said they were close to retaking the strategic oil town of Brega after earlier recapturing Ajdabiya from government controls with the help of coalition air strikes. Rebel fighters, celebrating on the streets of Ajdabiya, said many fighters belonging to forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi were also taken hostage. According to reports from Benghazi, among them was General Bilgasim Al-Ganga, the number three in Gaddafi's army. He has a fierce reputation among the opposition who accuse him of committing many atrocities under the Gaddafi regime.
Various western media report that a distraught Libyan woman has told journalists in Tripoli she was raped by government troops, before being bundled away by officials. Euronews says Iman al-Obeidi sought out foreign reporters in the capital's Rixos hotel on Saturday morning, weeping and claiming that troops had detained her at a checkpoint, tied her up, abused her and then led her away to be gang-raped. As al-Obeidi spoke she was tackled by hotel staff and government minders dragged her out of the hotel. Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, later told journalists that the woman was drunk and possibly mentally challenged.
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogzin, has told Russia's Interfax news agency that Nato was being drawn deeper and deeper into war in North Africa and warned the alliance it could be dragged into a full-scale war. Russia backed UN sanctions against Libya but, along with Germany, India and Brazil, abstained in a UN Security Council vote on the authorization of a no-fly zone.
CNN says US President Barack Obama sounded an upbeat note on the mission in Libya, saying Gadhafi's air defenses had been disabled and his forces pushed back. In his weekly radio address, he said that because they acted quickly, a humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided and the lives of countless civilians had been saved. Obama is to address the nation on his Libya strategy on Monday.
President Idriss Deby Itno of Chad has told Jeune Afrique that Al Qaeda’s offshoot in North Africa had snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there. He did not say how many surface-to-air missiles were stolen, but told the African weekly that the arms were then smuggled into their sanctuaries in Tenere, a desert region of the Sahara that stretches from northeast Niger to western Chad.
Asharq Al-Awsat says at least three people are reported killed in clashes between Syrian anti-government protesters and security forces in the coastal city of Latakia. Demonstrators burned down the headquarters of the Baath Party and a police station. They did the same in the town of Tafas. In the southern city of Daraa – the scene of anti government protests in Syria so far – security forces pulled back and allowed mourners to attend a funeral procession for the 20 people killed there on Friday. Officials confirmed 27 killed in clashes in cities of Homs, Sanamen, Daraa and Latakia since rallies began on March 15.
The Independent on Sunday reports five British police officers and 28 protesters were injured and nine people arrested when hundreds of demonstrators smashed windows and attempted to occupy shops in central London – as hundreds of thousands of people marched against government cuts. Between 400,000 and 500,000 teachers, nurses, firefighters, council and NHS workers, other public sector employees, students, pensioners and campaign groups from across the UK marched through central London to a rally where union officials and Labour leader Ed Miliband condemned the “brutal” cuts in jobs and services.
Deutsche Welle says some 250,000 demonstrators in Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg vented their anger at the government's nuclear policy on Saturday, supported by Germany's umbrella union body, the DGB, as well as politicians from the opposition Greens and Social Democrats. Organizers said they were the biggest anti-nuclear protests Germany has ever seen.
Radiation levels have soared in seawater near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Asia Observer quotes the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency saying tests showed levels of iodine in seawater 30 kilometers from the coastal nuclear complex had soared to 1,250 times higher than normal. However, they were not considered a threat to marine life or food safety. The agency said on Saturday that temperature and pressure in all reactors had stabilized.